Johnny Flynn Quotes

In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.

A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things, or to tell a joke.

I think once you write fiction, you put it out, and it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, some of which are going to be shocking to the writer.

As much as I really like the screenwriting thing, the novel is where the author has so much control.

I'm always trying to make something that is impossible to film. Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.

In my own writing, I think of myself as a realist who exaggerates a little.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I'm 100 percent fiction writer... I don't want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don't state my political messages to anybody.

I'd rather let the fiction speak for itself and I don't want to write fiction that tells people how to feel, and I don't want to be judgmental in the fiction.

Let the novelists fret about consistency - story writers should feel free to jam; to get things right in new, surprising ways by allowing themselves, now and then, to get things wrong.

I'm much more interested in allowing a story to happen, and people find whatever meaning is in there.

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'.

I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.

It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

It's all about letting the story take over.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes.

All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.

Playing with different genres and perspectives and ways of telling stories is one of the perks of being a novelist, but at the same time, I want precision. And in order to be precise about stuff, you have to get personal. Symbolism is very boring.

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

If you set out to write an adjective novel, you're setting out to write a mediocre novel; your allegiance is to the adjective, not to the story, and then that just sucks all the joy right out of it.

I write the kind of stuff I'd like to watch.

With fiction, you can take something that bothers you, or that you don't have in clear focus, and you can put it under as much stress as you want. Really get underneath the skin. With nonfiction, you're restricted to what happened.